


Better Days

by nahchilles



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: M/M, guess who took a bite of the valdangelo forbidden fruit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:13:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22319185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahchilles/pseuds/nahchilles
Summary: You are shadow. You are a shroud of darkness that slips over reality like a veil, barely corporeal. You fade in the morning sun until you are whittled away to nothing, only to come alive once more at dusk.
Relationships: Nico di Angelo/Leo Valdez, Nico di Angelo/Will Solace
Comments: 12
Kudos: 62





	Better Days

**Author's Note:**

> churned this out like butter at 3 in the morning even though I had midterms the next day. please enjoy.

Ever since you were young, you’ve existed on a different plane from everyone else. It isn’t so distant that you’ve lost touch with the world. It’s more like peering in through a looking glass — adjacent, nearly close enough to touch, but never so close as to fully  _ exist _ in the way that others do.

You live on a different plane, one that allows you to melt into the shadows as if you were one with them but disallows you from being a real, full-blooded human being. In the mortal world, you fade and you isolate yourself, you isolate yourself and you fade, fade until you become the shadows you claim to exert control over.

You are shadow. You are a shroud of darkness that slips over reality like a veil, barely corporeal. You fade in the morning sun until you are whittled away to nothing, only to come alive once more at dusk.

You wake up in your bed in Cabin 13, its softness still an unfamiliar luxury after months and years of living like a nomad.

You figure you should probably get up for breakfast.

  
  
  
  


#

  
  
  
  


Living at Camp Half Blood is still strange, even after a month. You leave frequently — there exists a part of you that feels that staying in one place for more than a few days at a time is equivalent to being trapped. You visit Reyna at Camp Jupiter several times. You travel to the underworld and help sort out the disarray left over from the war. One night, for no particular reason other than that you have nowhere else to be, you take the midnight train as far as it’ll go. The train is empty as it zips through the darkness, streetlights reduced to streaks of light in the darkened window pane. 

The subway seat is solid beneath you, scraped-up plastic digging into your hands as you grip it until your knuckles go white. Still, you aren’t completely sure it’ll hold you, aren’t completely sure that you yourself are solid. You feel like you could slip right out of existence, right through the plastic seat and the train tracks right down to the underworld. You feel like any moment now, you might turn into one of the chattering shades of asphodel.

You stare at your own hands and wonder,  _ am I real? _ You swear that sometimes, the light passes right through you as if you were a mirage.

  
  
  
  


#

  
  
  
  


You have your first kiss with Will Solace from the Apollo cabin. He insists on walking you back to your cabin after the campfire even though it’s the farthest. 

“Don’t you get lonely, all alone in that cabin of yours?” Wills hand brushes yours in the darkness, the same way it had in the firelight, inconspicuous yet unmistakably intentional. You think he would probably be happy if you took his hand. 

“Not really,” you reply, your voice gravelly from disuse. You clear your throat.

“Right,” Will says, his mouth curving into a wry smile. “Hades kid. Your kind likes voluntary solitary confinement.”

_ Your kind _ , you think, incredulous. “Hazel doesn’t,” you say.

“Huh. I guess you’re right.” The back of Will’s hand brushes your knuckles once more. Finally, finally, he takes your hand in his, pressing your palms together. Even this tiny patch of warmth, of contact, is almost too much for you. Is certainly too much for a dead thing, a shadow. “Guess it’s just a you thing, then,” Will murmurs.

The two of you arrive at Cabin 13. Will doesn’t let go of your hand.

“We’re here,” he says. You don’t dignify that with a response.

Will takes your hand between both of his own, his thumbs pressing into your palm. “Nico,” he says, “I really like you.”

You say, “I don’t understand why.” 

He rolls his eyes at you, but his lips quirk into a smile. He says, “Gods, you’re impossible.” And then, softly, “I don’t know what to do with you.”

You put your hand on his cheek, on his warm, warm skin, and his eyes immediately drop to your lips. “Gods, Nico,” he says again, breathless, before your lips meet.

It doesn’t feel like much at first, but then you tilt your head a bit and your lips slot together and for a moment, for a single delicious moment, you are grounded, held together by desire and heat and Will’s touch. You lean in closer, kiss him more deeply, give in to the shame and need and  _ want _ that have plagued you for years. You may not be human, but you become something close to it.

When you pull away, Will is flushed and panting. “I, uh—” He grins, nearly glowing with it. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Nico.”

“Yeah,” you say hoarsely. “Yeah, okay.”

You watch his back as he jogs back to his own cabin full of brothers and sisters, all shining and golden with the essense of the sun god. Then, you turn around and enter your own cabin, empty except for two changes of clothes. The plum-colored windbreaker Reyna bought you as a replacement for your aviator jacket. Your stygian iron sword.

You bunch up the windbreaker to use as a pillow, forsaking the coffin-like Hades cabin beds for the cold, stone-tiled floor, hoping that the familiarity will help lull you to sleep. 

  
  
  
  


#

  
  
  
  


Will breaks things off with you three months later.

He says you’re inconsistent, which is probably true. You’re gone more days than you aren’t. You disappear without warning because you aren’t used to having someone to warn.

You don’t mean to be an asshole. The truth is, you’re just lightyears away from even considering what Will wanted out of you as a boyfriend, which might be even worse. You aren’t used to having people  _ expect _ things from you, especially when those things are warmth and affection. You never meant to hurt Will, but there are a lot of things you don’t  _ mean _ to do and that doesn’t really excuse any of them. So it’s probably for the best that things ended between the two of you.

_ You are  _ not _ boyfriend material _ , you think in the voice of Leo Valdez. It’s been a while since you’ve thought of him, though the certain knowledge of his death still sits in the forefront of your mind, a grim reminder of the war just passed. You think of how he’d say it, probably while thumbing the sleeve of your jacket with faux thoughtfulness, like a tailor examining expensive fabric. 

That almost coaxes a smile out of you. It’s a dumb joke, exactly the kind Valdez would gravitate towards. You wonder what happened to him, if his soul rests peacefully in Elysium. For some reason, you find that notion doubtful.

  
  
  
  


#

  
  
  
  


Jason Grace knocks on your door at an hour you’re sure is far too early to be reasonable. You wish he’d just skip the formality and save you the trouble of getting up, but Jason is too polite for that.

You open the door to a painfully chipper son of Zeus. “Good morning,” he says brightly. He frowns, eyeing the still-made bed and the crumpled windbreaker on the ground. “Were you sleeping on the floor?” 

You wave away his concern, and stand aside to let him in. He sits gingerly on the coffin-bed that would normally belong to Hazel.

“I heard you and Will broke up,” Jason says. “How are you holding up?”

“Fine,” you yawn. “Really,” you say in response to his incredulous expression. You pick up the windbreaker and shake off the dust it’s collected from the floor.

Jason’s brow furrows. “You sure? I thought you really liked him.”

“I did. It just—” You struggle for the words to explain that you aren’t cut out for these things, that you inexplicably end up disappointing the people close to you one way or another, that you aren’t  _ boyfriend material, _ whatever the hell that means. “It didn’t work out,” you finish lamely.

Jason looks doubtful. “Uh-huh. Well, Piper and I were just about to have breakfast in the dining pavilion. We’re always here for you, y’know. If you ever want to  _ actually _ talk about it.”

“I think I’m gonna go for a while, actually. I get the sense that this isn’t, ah, the best place for me to be right now.”

Jason seems disappointed, but he nods. He says, “Come back soon, okay? We’ll miss you over here.”

You tell him you’ll miss them too and, surprisingly, you really do mean it. Camp Half Blood has grown on you some. You let Jason pull you into a tight side-hug and manage to only squirm a little.

When Jason leaves, you strap your sword to your back and stuff the rest of your belongings into the backpack. You take one last look around your cabin in all its stupidly decorated glory. Then, as easily as coming home, you melt into the shadows.

  
  
  
  


#

  
  
  
  


You split your time between the underworld and Camp Jupiter for the next month or so. You aren’t avoiding Camp Halfblood necessarily. It just so happens that there’s a lot going on, and if that happens to coincide with your stupid, messy breakup, then so be it. 

The underworld is undergoing what your father calls “renovations” to keep up with the steady stream of death from the mortal world. What this really means is that for some ungodly reason, processing takes twice as long as usual and you spend what could be hours or months manning the EZ Death line. 

You don’t see Leo Valdez, not in Elysium or Asphodel. You wonder if he’s been reborn, if he’s left his life behind for good. 

You scarcely sees your father that month, but Hades does manage to snag you for brunch one day, which consists of a McDonald’s value meal for you and what appears to be a bowl of pure darkness for Hades.

“So, son,” Hades says halfway through the meal, his hands clasped on top of the dining table. He clears his throat.

“Father, please,” you say, terse. “Whatever you’re about to say,  _ don’t _ .” 

Hades sighs. “Nico. I know our relationship isn’t the most conventional, but know that I care for your happiness deeply.” He dabs daintily at his mouth with a napkin. 

“I know,” you say. 

“What I’m  _ trying _ to say is that if you wish me to turn Apollo’s spawn into a lovely rug for the throne room, you need only say the word.”

“Do  _ not _ ,” you snarl. You realize that you’re standing, fists at your side, and that an assortment ivory-white bones has cropped up from the ground in a ring around your chair. 

Hades raises an eyebrow. “I was only making an offer. Sit down, Nico, your breakfast is getting cold.”

You sit, scowling into your french fries. 

  
  
  
  


#

  
  
  
  


You’re at Camp Jupiter when it happens, purely by chance. You get the news from Hazel.

“It’s Leo,” she says, eyes glittering with excitement as she launches into the story of Leo Valdez crash landing his bronze dragon in Camp Half-blood, scaring a whole lot of naiads and dryads in the process. 

“Piper just Iris-messaged me! You, me, and Frank — we need to get over there, now!”

Together, you and Hazel shadow travel with Frank to the ridge of Half-blood Hill. Frank and Hazel immediately take off towards the obvious crash landing site of Leo’s fifty-ton dragon, a twenty-yard trail of destruction leading up to Festus himself, looking worse for wear but otherwise whole.

There, impossibly, standing next to the wreckage is Leo Valdez, alive and grinning like a maniac as he embraces his friends. 

You hang back to watch the reunion, Leo’s friends crying as they squeeze him half to death, Leo himself just laughing, though even from a distance, you can see that his eyes are misty.

You realize that he’s come alone.

  
  
  
  


#

  
  
  
  


He sidles up next to you at the campfire that night, the first time you talk to him since he arrives. 

“So, I hear you and Solace broke up.”

You scowl. “What’s it to you, Valdez?”

Leo backs up, raising his hands in front of him, palms out. “Woah. Touchy death boy.”

“If we’re playing that game, I didn’t see Calypso with you when you arrived.”

Leo’s expression contorts into something between anger and grief and exhaustion before it settles on a tired smile and he sinks down onto the earth next to you. “Ha. I guess I walked right into that one. Look, I didn’t mean to make you angry.”

You sniff. “It’s fine. I shouldn’t have said that either.”

Leo grins. “Great. Now that we’ve both viciously wounded each other with words, I say we should be friends.”

You shoot him a look. “Friends?”

“You know! Pals. Buddies. Amigos.”

“Right,” you say. “I know what friends are. That doesn’t explain why you want me to be one of yours.”

Leo’s smile dims. “Well, di Angelo, don’t hurt me for saying this, but in this merry bunch, we’re kind of the odd ones out.”

You huff a mirthless laugh. “You don’t say.”

“I mean, look around us,  _ chico _ ! All of our friends are nice and coupled up and here we are, with only each other for warmth.” Leo waggles his eyebrows at you, and you shove him away. He only laughs. 

You take this moment to study him. His hair has grown out, long enough that he keeps it tied in a small bun at the back of his head, and his skin is tanned a deeper brown. His eyes have a sadder, more introspective quality, the only real indication you have that the person beside you has died and come back to life. Otherwise, he looks exactly the same as he had before that fateful day he’d given his life to blow up Gaea. There isn’t even a scratch on him, no evidence of the massive explosion that lit up the sky, Leo Valdez at its core.

He meets your eyes with an amused smile. “You’re staring.”

He leaves it at that, which you find strange. Surely the old Leo would’ve teased you, would’ve thrown in some exaggerated flirting for good measure. But it’s likely whatever happened in the months he’d disappeared had changed him irreparably. Put an end to the dumb, carefree kid he’d been when the Argo II first took flight. 

“What  _ happened _ to you?” you ask. 

His smile loses some of its levity. “Well, do you want the long version or the short version? The short version is that I found an unfindable magic island, crash landed my dragon, picked up a pretty immortal girl, went magic island hopping in the Atlantic, had her leave me somewhere near Sicily, crashed a couple more times, fought a bunch of monsters, and ended up here.” He frowns. “Wow, the short version is pretty long.”

“She left you? Just like that?”

“Kind of. Well, no, not really. I mean, she spend millenia cooped up on an island at the gods’ mercy. It makes sense that she’d want to be free for a while. Live on her own terms.” He stretches his arms above his head, his faded Camp Half-blood shirt riding up a little. “Besides, I knew I had to come back here. It wasn’t fair what I did, leaving you guys hanging.”

“I think I understand why you did it. My father — he said some deaths in this war couldn’t be prevented.  _ Shouldn’t _ be prevented,” you say. “You should’ve said something, though. Or come back sooner. Your friends love you. They never stopped grieving you.”

Leo cracks a smile. “And you couldn’t give two shits, I presume?” 

You frown. “You  _ know _ that’s not what I meant. Don’t try to change the subject.”

He sighs. “Yeah, I know, I know. It was a shitty thing that I did. I don’t regret rescuing Calypso, though, even if it didn’t work out. She deserved to get off that stupid island. I figured— if there’s one good thing I could do with my life, it was that.”

“Heroes do love their melodrama,” you grumble.

That garners a laugh from Leo, the column his neck illuminated in the firelight as he throws his head back. He says, “Yeah, that just about sums it up.”

  
  
  
  
  


#

  
  
  
  


You find Bunker 9 purely by chance.

You’re shadow travelling back to Camp Half-blood from the underworld, except you aren’t concentrating very hard, so you end up inside a mountain. This could prove to be disastrous, but thankfully, rather than having your molecules crushed out of existence by teleporting directly into solid earth, you find yourself in a hollowed-out room that appears to be half-forge, half-workshop. Standing at one of the worktables, fingers ablaze as he fuses two wires together, is Leo.

“Valdez?” you say.

He yelps, his finger slipping on the wires, sending up a plume of dark smoke. Leo chokes for a second, his eyes watering as he stumbles out from behind the worktable and says, “ _ Nico _ ?” How the fuck did you get here?”

“Tried to shadow travel to Camp,” you say, examining the bunker with cool fascination. “Must’ve slipped. Sorry about your wires.” You eye the steaming mess of copper and plastic.

Leo rolls his eyes. “Whatever. Do you happen to know what time it is? Piper gets mad when I hole up here for too long and miss dinner.” 

You shrug. “Time runs different in the underworld. I couldn’t tell you what month it is.”

“Thanks a lot, Mister Helpful.” Leo tugs off his welding goggles. “C’mon, I’ll walk you back to Camp. It’s probably getting late.”

They arrive at the dining pavilion towards the tail end of dinner. There’s a dwindling crowd of people, including Percy and Annabeth and, sure enough, Piper.

“There you are!” she yells as Leo approaches. Then, she catches sight of you, and her expression brightens. “Nico! Oh my gods, where’ve you been? Jason will be so happy to see you!”

“Death boy over here teleported straight into a mountain,” Leo says, grinning. “He would’ve died if I hadn’t saved him with my heroics.”

Piper snorts. “That’s likely.”

“I can believe the first part,” Percy says. “Remember that one time Nico teleported into the stables? Scared the shit out of the pegasi.”

Annabeth smiles. “Or when he appeared ten feet above the canoe lake.”

“Hey,” you interject, but there’s a smile on your face. “I’ll have you know I brought that giant statue all the way here from Greece,” you say, gesturing towards the Athena Parthenos where it rests on Half-blood Hill, “and I only  _ nearly _ dropped it in a volcano  _ once _ .” 

Everyone cracks up at that. 

Having dinner with your friends is nice, nicer than having no one but the dead for company, who stare in envy at the food you bring from the mortal world. You realizes that despite what you may have thought, you’ve missed this, missed just… being around other people. Maybe this time, you’ll stick around for longer than a week.

  
  
  
  


#

  
  
  
  


“You never did tell me what went down with you and Solace,” Leo says as he fits a series of complex gears together.

After your accidental discovery, you’ve sort of made it a habit, hanging around Bunker 9. For Leo, you think it’s probably akin to having a stray cat hanging around, since you spend most of your time lazing around on the cool stone floor, but he hasn’t complained about it yet. You think that secretly, he’s probably glad to have another sentient being with him. You can’t imagine it’s difficult to lose your mind with only celestial bronze and small automatons for company. 

You sigh from your spot in the coolest corner of the room, fidget with your skull ring. “There isn’t anything to tell. He broke it off with me. Said I was inconsistent.” 

Leo hums. “I always sorta pegged Solace as the needy type.”

“It wasn’t his fault. I mean, he was right.”

Leo snorts. “Yeah, well.” He curses as one of the fine gears slips through his fingers, skittering across the table. “You don’t place your bets on Nico di Angelo unless you’re willing to wait him out.” You wonder if there’s a vein of bitter resignation to his voice, or if that’s purely your imagination. 

Leo finds the gear and resumes his work calibrating the gears in silence.

“He was always…  _ babying _ me. Like he thought I didn’t know how to take care of myself.”

Leo laughs softly. “I hate to tell you this, Nico, but people take one look at you and they want to wrap you up in a heated blanket.”

_ Nico _ . You kind of like the way your name rolls off his tongue, slightly accented. It makes something warm and volatile coil beneath your ribcage. You scowl. “I’ve been on my own since my sister died. I don’t— I don’t  _ need _ anyone’s help.”

“You say that, but I’m pretty sure even you know that isn’t true.” He wipes sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “Besides, it isn’t about need. There’s people who  _ want _ to help you, because they’re your friends and they love you. At some point, you’ve gotta start letting them.”

“Whatever,” you mutter, turning your attention back to your ring. 

“I’m right!” Leo says in a singsong voice. “Trust me, my well of deep and insightful wisdom comes from experience. Now, if you’re gonna hang around my workshop like a creepy hobo, at least hand me that number four wrench on the other table.”

  
  
  
  


#

  
  
  
  


“So. You like Leo.”

It’s one of the rare days you’ve let yourself be harangued into a sparring match, but the glaring sun and the hot, dry breeze that permeates the dusty arena are making you regret it. Not to mention that Jason is being  _ exceedingly _ irritating. “Shove it, Grace,” you say as your sword clashes with his, Stygian iron against imperial gold. “I don’t have a crush on every boy I spend time with.”

Jason relents, the edge of his sword skittering across yours. You wince at the shriek of metal against metal. “Okay, okay. I’m just saying that hypothetically, if you  _ did _ like him, I wouldn’t be, like, opposed to my best friend dating my  _ other, _ slightly more annoying best friend.”

“We’re friends?” You feint towards Jason’s torso, blade veering downwards towards his calf at the last second, but he just leaps straight upward to avoid your weapon, hovering for a moment before daintily landing a few feet away. 

He grins. “You act all cold and distant, di Angelo, but you can’t fool me. I  _ know _ you’re all soft and mushy inside. Like a mollusk.”

You stifle a gag at the comparison. “I think you’ve been spending too much time with Percy.” 

Jason aims a strike a little to the left of your sternum. You parry it easily. He only shrugs, nonchalant despite the heavy armor weighing down his limbs. “Maybe so. You still haven’t given me a straight answer about Leo.”

You sigh, exasperated. Your annoyance manifests itself in the form of a mound of bones — human or otherwise — which break through the hard-packed dirt floor and ensnare Jason’s left foot, causing him to stumble. “I  _ told _ you. It isn’t like that.” 

Jason kicks through a brittle clavicle to free his foot. He charges you at the speed of crippled tortoise, obviously not nearly as interested in the fight as he is in the conversation. You sidestep him and thwap him in the ribs with the flat of your sword.

“ _ Oof _ .” Jason clutches the front of his armor, though you know it hurts nowhere near as much as he’s pretending. “You don’t hold back, do you?”

You lower your sword, kicking at a stray shard of bleached white bone absently. “This  _ is _ me holding back, Grace.”

“You really don’t like Leo?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate, because from what I can tell, he  _ really _ likes  _ you _ .”

Your head snaps up to look at Jason just as a ball of white-hot electricity explodes right in front of you, sending you halfway across the arena. Jason laughs his annoying perfect-golden-boy laugh, managing to sound simultaneously apologetic and extremely amused as he helps you up. You scowl at him. “Shut  _ up _ . You’re full of shit.” 

Jason just gets back into position, knees bent, gripping his sword with both hands, expression infuriatingly innocent. You shift your stance as well, fully planning on wiping the floor with him, but you’re off your game after that, heavy-handed and slow to react. Jason keeps giving you that innocent look, but there’s a knowing glint in his eye, a twinge of mischief as he takes advantage of your distraction to knock the blade clean out of your hand. 

  
  
  
  


#

  
  
  
  


Leo builds an old-fashioned phonograph out of scrap metal in what he apparently thinks is a fun little side project, a break from his  _ real _ projects, whatever those might be. You’ve spent more days in Bunker 9 than outside of it this past week, a reprieve from Camp Half-blood’s perpetually blazing sun, and you still don’t understand a single thing Leo does. He jumps from one seemingly unrelated activity to the next at lightning speed, and then, when you’re certain he’s doing it just to fuck with you, he pulls it all together somehow into a single cohesive machine. 

Though you’ll never admit it, you like to watch Leo while he works. His hands move nimbly through a series of complicated maneuvers, never once faltering, and it’s mesmerizing in the same way it mesmerized you once to watch Percy bending the very sea to his will. 

It’s the same with the phonograph: with the heat of his hands, he forms a cone of metal, a wide cylinder, a coil of copper, and none of it makes sense until suddenly, it  _ does _ , and there’s a fully-formed machine before them.

“Pretty good work, right?” Leo says, grinning. “I changed the design up a bit, so the sound should be pretty good.” He hoists a dusty box of records up from under the table. “Stole these from the Big House.”

“Are you sure you aren’t a son of Hermes?” you ask, stifling a cough at the plume of dust that erupts from the box as Leo starts rifling through it. 

“Pretty sure,” Leo says, “unless there was a lot more godly inbreeding involved in my conception than I’m comfortable with. Ooh, this is a good one!” He brandishes a record with half the print on the sleeve faded away. He sets it on the phonograph and positions the needle. There’s only a crackle at first, and then a deep Spanish voice filters through the machine, an upbeat combination of drums and wind instruments and singing. 

Leo immediately starts dancing, attempting what might be a Salsa and nearly tripping over his own feet, his arms flailing out to grip the table for balance. You laugh, and Leo grins up at you. “What, di Angelo, can’t handle my moves?” 

“For your sake, I hope no one else has ever seen your ‘moves’.”

“Aw, c’mon, Nico, you know my moves are for your eyes only.” He regains his balance and takes both your hands in his own, pulling you close to him. “Come on,  _ chico _ , let’s dance!” 

You try to resist because it’s so stupidly ridiculous to be dancing in a hidden bunker carved into a limestone cliff to a Spanish song blaring from a phonograph that Leo had puzzled together in barely an hour, to be dancing with Leo’s hands in yours, his grin going soft with proximity, his eyes sparkling with mirth. You try to find the resolve to slip out of his grasp because an intrinsic part of you knows that this, dancing a breath apart from one of your best, one of your  _ only _ friends? Is probably a bad idea.

But the truth is that you like dancing. Your mother would always take you and Bianca out to dance when you were young, to songs sung in a different language at a different rhythm. More than that, you like dancing with Leo, being close enough to him that you can clearly see the freckles on his cheeks. You like him  _ so much _ when he’s like this, soft and broken open and happy, his curly hair brushing his shoulders with every step.

  
  
  
  


#

  
  
  
  


“You’ve been here a while,” Leo says, elbow-deep in Festus’s guts. The dragon gives a long, curious creak. “A lot longer than usual. Guess I’ve been keeping you entertained, hm?” Leo meets your eyes with an impish grin before a spurt of oil from within the machinery catches him in the face and he curses, turning his attention back to Festus. 

You frown. Your sense of time tends to be a little wonky from your time in the underworld. You hadn’t realized it, but a week of lazing around in your cabin and the bunker had turned into two, and then three. And now, you’ve been at camp for nearly a straight month, minus a couple short visits to Camp Jupiter to check up on your sister. 

“Huh. I guess I have.”

Leo scoffs. “Oh,  _ you guess you have _ . Y’know, if I’d known that getting you to stick around was as easy as making you clean up grease stains and pick up tools for me, I would’ve tried it a long time ago. Speaking of, pass me the number 5 Philips please, dear assistant.”

You roll your eyes, because Leo is  _ annoying _ , but you also pick the tiny screwdriver out of the jumble of tools and wires that inhabits Leo’s desktop with ease and hand it over obediently, so he might actually be onto something there.

“Why’re you so intent on giving your friends the slip, anyway?”

“It isn’t that. It’s just… I was on my own for a few years after— after Bianca died. I got used to never staying in one place for too long, or else the monsters would find me.” You wrinkle your nose at the memories of being stalked like prey while you camped out in the woods, of monsters baring their teeth and telling you that the stink of death you carried was too pungent to possibly mask. “Some habits are hard to break, I suppose.”

Leo continues tinkering with Festus, but there’s a small furrow between his brows, as if he’s upset. “You don’t have to do that anymore, though. You’ve got a home. You’ve got us watching your back.”

“I know, but. But. It’s not really a choice. I  _ know _ that I’m not meant to be in the mortal world. Like there’s a part of me that already belongs to the underworld, and it’s just a matter of time before it takes me whole.”

Leo frowns at you, sidelong. “Have you been fading again? Maybe you should lay off the shadow the shadow travel for a while.”

You shake your head. “It isn’t that. It’s more like—” You try to find the words to describe how stray cats hiss at you, how people cross the street to avoid you like they too can smell the underworld on you. How despite your best intentions, you end up betraying the people around you, getting them  _ killed _ . How you aren’t sure if you’re a person or merely a shade of one, haven’t been since your sister died and left you alone in the world. 

You don’t continue the thought, but Leo must see something in your eyes because he abandons Festus’s machinery to stand in front of you, his hands resting on your shoulders.

“Hey. Hey, none of that. You know you’re gonna be okay, right? Nico. You’re gonna be  _ fine _ .” 

You croak out something resembling a laugh. “You don’t know that.”

“Sure I do. I don’t know if you think you’re death incarnate or satan’s spawn or whatever, but I assure you, you’re just a kid who shops at Hot Topic a little too much.”

Your brow furrows. “What is… Hot Topic?”

Leo snorts, a little bit of the heaviness dissipating. “Oh, man. I’ve got to take you sometime. It’ll be like a pilgrimage for emo Hades kids.”

“Now I really don’t want to go.” Your expression goes pinched. “I wasn’t kidding. Just my being here is a bad omen. I get people  _ killed _ .” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“I’m serious! It’s dangerous being around me.” 

Leo has the audacity to laugh. He flicks you in the forehead. “Yeah, okay, pretty boy. Keep telling yourself that.”

You scowl. “Don’t call me that.”

“What, pretty boy?”

“I’m not  _ pretty _ .”

“You’re  _ very _ pretty,” Leo says, his voice going soft. The corners of his eyes crinkle as he regards you. “I think I’m gonna kiss you now,” he murmurs, whisper-soft. “That cool?”

You scowl harder, but when Leo leans in, your eyes slide shut of their own accord and your head tilts, muscle memory from another kiss so long ago. He kisses you, open-mouthed and eager, and you respond with equal fervor. 

It’s been months since you’ve kissed anyone, ‘anyone’ meaning Will, and this is a world of difference from that. Will kissed you like he was testing the waters, assessing how far out he could conceivably go, but  _ Leo _ — Leo kisses like he’s got something to prove. 

And so you find yourself backed into one of Leo’s work tables, among the scraps of celestial bronze and half-formed machines, just another thing for him to take apart with his clever hands. You don’t mind at all, kind of like it, even, when Leo’s hands go searing hot through the thin material of your t-shirt, against your waist, the plane of your back.

Through the heat and the headiness and the haze of pure  _ want _ , you feel yourself smile into Leo’s mouth. 

  
  
  
  


#

  
  
  
  


On the last day of summer, you don’t see much of Leo. He spends it frantically running around Camp with his siblings, rigging handmade explosives that bear a lot more resemblance to a Roman candle than any normal firecracker. You don’t mind; you spend the afternoon with Hazel and Reyna, who, along with a few dozen Roman demigods, came all the way from Camp Jupiter for the show. Frank, in elephant form, helps lug the Hephaestus cabin’s supplies across camp. 

Camp Half-blood is packed with demigods, even more full of activity than usual. Everyone is in good spirits, even the campers packing their bags to leave the next day, and even though it’s so much hotter and noisier than usual, their good mood is so infectious that you catch yourself smiling as you survey the chaos. 

You, Reyna, and Hazel share a table in the dining pavilion, which is cooled by a passing breeze and mercifully devoid of people. Reyna sips at a mug of hot chocolate, provided by the enchanted dinnerware. 

“Are you sure those things are safe?” Reyna asks, frowning at the ring of firecrackers the children of Hephaestus set up at the foot of the Athena Parthenos on Half-blood Hill. 

“Well— Leo’s in charge, so I’d say the odds are about 50-50,” Hazel replies. 

As if on cue, one of the firecrackers goes off, leaving a trail of golden sparks across the sky. “Shit!” Leo yelps from the hill. “Meant to do that! Totally meant to do that!”

Hazel cracks up at that, and even Reyna laughs softly, shaking her head in fond exasperation. “You greeks,” she mutters, though you can tell she’s happy being here. In the months since the war with the Giants, the Romans have made a home of Camp Half-blood, just as the Greeks did Camp Jupiter. Being at Camp Half-blood allows her to take a step back from her praetorship for a moment, to stop being a figurehead and a leader and the essense of Rome and simply  _ be _ .

Finally, as the sun begins to set over Half-blood Hill, painting the sky in streaks of red, people begin to gather at the campfire. You find yourself squished between Reyna and Frank, who is pink from exertion from his hours as a pachyderm. At his right sits Hazel, followed by Percy, who has Annabeth’s head resting on his shoulder. At Reyna’s left are Piper and Jason, Jason in animated conversation with the Stoll brothers while Reyna and Piper speak in hushed tones, their heads bowed together. 

When the sun disappears entirely behind the hill, the first sparks of the Hephaestus cabin’s fireworks begin to light up the sky. And seconds later, Leo Valdez nearly plows into you.

“Hey,” he murmurs into your ear, breathless. He grins at Frank on your right side, who, in return, gives Leo a dorky smile and a hearty slap on the back, sending him into a small coughing fit, before scooting over to let him sit next to you. 

You gape at him. “Wha— what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be making sure you don’t, I dunno, send the Athena Parthenos up in flames?”

He waves away your concern. “Nah, it’s all good, Nyssa’s got it. She and those crazy kids have been dying to set these babies off.”

You look at him doubtfully. “And you aren’t?” 

“What can I say? Guess I’m getting too old to keep blowing shit up. Gotta pass these sacred Hephaestus traditions down to the young whippersnappers.” He pantomimes wiping away a tear, then grins at you, his arm slipping around your waist. The action is tentative, because this  _ thing _ you have between the two of you is brand new and a little bit like the missile-sized firecrackers Leo put together — to be handled gently, lest it blow up in your faces. 

But when you lean into his embrace and feel his arm tighten around you, when you look up at him to find him already looking at you, his eyes bright and happy— it’s enough, you think. For now, this is enough. 

The sky lit up in gold reminds you of a bitter, bloody war ended not too long ago, of Leo Valdez lit up from within like a phoenix, of his going supernova. It reminds you of the twist in your gut as you watched from below, the certainty that Leo had passed on. It reminds you of death, of battles won through sharp, painful sacrifice, of months passed in grief — but it also makes you think of rebirth. Of life, and light, and love, borne from darkness against all odds.

  
  



End file.
